If by power outage or free trade dust up, Canadian supermarkets were to close for an indefinite period, prairie farmers would be among the first to go hungry. That’s a shocking thought - and surely something we less food-secure folks in urban centres should give a good long mull over.
With the rise of industrial agriculture after the Second World War, small mixed grain farms in Saskatchewan and Manitoba gave up their “mix” — the vegetables, beef, dairy and poultry they sold to nearby cities and towns. Instead, farmers knocked down barns and fences to seed vast monocultures of grain.
And that, in a soybean shell, is what happened to Winnipeg, once the Chicago of the North, the foodie cultural crossroads of Canada, attracting aboriginal hunters and fur traders to the trading table at The Forks, where the Assiniboine River flows into the Red River.
The Hudson Bay Company established headquarters here and a hungry merchant class sprang up to support explorers-turned-farmers who cultivated market-garden farms along the shores of the muddy rivers. Then came the town’s glory days as a railway centre; immigrants from Europe and Asia arrived and opened restaurants that served up cures for homesickness — steaming bowls of borscht and chow mien.
The cultural smorgasbord is still on display in the city’s dining rooms, but, sadly, industrial farming has left this town starving for local food ripened by the intense prairie sun.
A few trailblazing chefs, the city’s new explorers, have ventured into the countryside to find small farmers growing local meats and produce, but such farmers are too few, too scarce. And, sadly, even the new local-vore chefs still view their menu through the rose-coloured glasses of major food distributors who can deliver a dozen tenderloins and a box of California greens faster that you can say Assiniboine.
On my stop in Winnipeg, I lunched at Bistro 7 ¼, a new white-table eatery at 725 Osbourne St., recommended as a place that strives for a direct connection with suppliers. Chef Alexander Sveune cooks in a dramatic open kitchen situated in the centre of the dining room, surrounded by an eating bar. I sat at the bar and had a great chat with the chef. But when I asked for a taste of Manitoba, all Alexander could serve us was a tasty plate of spaghetti and veal meatballs, made with local veal and greenhouse tomatoes and Nature’s Path pasta - along with a few apologies. “The best time to eat local in Winnipeg,” he said, “is August.”
That’s three months off. By then I could probably eat a field of wheat.
Friend me on facebook | 
Follow me on Twitter | 
RSS Feed